The Longest Step
by Bryon Nightshade
Summary: Symmetra had many words to describe it- foolhardy, disgraceful, and traitorous for starters. So why couldn't she quit it? (Relationship fluff between confused, conflicted natural enemies.)


_Characters and situations are copyright Blizzard._

* * *

"We're gonna keep doing this, right?"

It was the first sound in a while—the first sound from inside the room, at least. Satya Vaswani, known professionally as Symmetra, blinked. Had she been asleep? No—just zoned out. Brain on idle. Or something.

The air was thick: hot, humid, and sticky. It would have been even if the two figures in the room had been doing something else. The rain forest, it seemed to Satya, was maybe two kilometers away and closing by the moment.

The window was open. It didn't seem to be helping. She'd been concerned at first that the noises coming from the room—their noises—would escape and be heard down below. Instead, even at this late hour, there was bustle and music coming from the other direction. The overhead fan, futilely trying to stir the soup that was the atmosphere, added a little extra noise as well. All together, it was enough that whispers couldn't be heard unless delivered directly to one's ear.

Which had happened more than once in the past half an hour.

Satya lifted her head to look at her lover. He was already looking at her, intently, eyes unblinking as if he was afraid to miss something. As if he lived for whatever sign or response she made. She had his entire attention.

She didn't know what to do with it.

Because Lucio Correia dos Santos, of all people, knew what a difficult question he'd just asked.

"I can't promise anything," she said. "You know that."

"I didn't ask for a promise," he replied. "I couldn't ask for that. I wouldn't ask for that."

She couldn't meet his gaze any longer. She put her cheek back down on his chest. He radiated heat, even with the sheen of sweat covering him. His breathing and pulse, though—those had evened out already. He was in excellent physical condition. She'd known that, of course, it was in his file and she'd seen it in action, but this was a practical demonstration.

My, how her mind jumped about when she was trying to avoid something.

"Then what are you asking for?" she said.

"I'm asking if you'll try. 'Cause I'll keep trying if you do."

"I…" she started. It didn't go far. It must have been the heat, slowing down her thoughts. It must have been fatigue, from the late hour and the taxing activities recently concluded. It must have been the fuzziness that follows passion and hormonal rushes.

It must have been something, because that clarity of mind she was famous for, that she prized so highly… it was nowhere to be found.

She didn't know how to answer.

"Sorry," he said, and she realized she'd let long seconds of silence slip past her. "It wasn't supposed to be a trick question."

"I'm supposed to be able to answer," she mumbled into his chest. If she moved her cheek, she could feel his pulse beneath the hard muscles and dark skin. It was… nice.

"I just…" he began, but he chuckled instead of finishing the sentence. "I hate the part where things get complicated again. There are times when it's simple, you know? When things are so obvious. And then it's not. The time when it goes from simple to not… that's the worst."

She hummed in agreement. "My thoughts exactly. I wonder, though…"

"What?"

"Is it ever actually simple? Or is it always complicated, and we just deny it for a time?"

"Naw," he said. "When it's you and me and we're together and we know why… That's as simple as it gets."

Maybe to him, she thought. She didn't dare say that. No good could come of it.

So many words were like that. So many things she could say, should say, that she would not say. Not if she wanted to preserve this. This…

What even was this? Other than absolutely insane.

She'd asked herself that many times. She still didn't have an answer.

"You're livin' in your head again," he said.

She refocused, sighed. "Well, there is a lot in it."

"Aww, I know you're smart, you don't gotta rub it in."

"That's not…" she started, but a glance at his face confirmed he was teasing her. "That's not what I meant, and you know it," she finished anyway.

"I know it," he agreed. He was grinning. He _knew_ what that did to her. She dropped her head yet again and occupied herself tracing fingers across various muscles. They were all well-defined—not bulky, but firm and lean, in the manner of muscles built through practical exercise. Someone was used to carrying his own weight.

Was it from a childhood of poverty? she wondered. Or was it more recent, since he began his… well his _professional_ career, as it were.

She supposed she could ask, but that conversation might wander where she didn't want it to. No. Let it lie. Ignore its origins, and just enjoy it.

That was as good a summary of their relationship as any.

Which, when she thought about it, contained the answer to his original question.

"I want to keep doing this," she said.

His arms wrapped around her, squeezed her tight against him. Even in the steaming room, his warmth enveloped her. "That's all I can hope for," he said. "We'll keep finding ways. As long as we can."

"And how much longer could that be?" she wondered with a touch of despair. She shook her head. "Never mind. I wasn't supposed to say that out loud."

"It's legit," he admitted, and his grip on her loosened. "Can't ignore it forever."

"Even now, I don't want to speak too loudly," she said. "And you, awful thing that you are… you keep trying to make me… vocalize."

"Course I do!" he said. "It's more fun that way."

She rolled her eyes. "Despite the fact that I don't sound anything like you, or the other people here? Despite the fact that even my English is unmistakably foreign, and my other languages moreso?"

"You're in no danger here," he said, not nearly as jovial this time.

"I don't understand how you can say that," she said, voice dropping.

"How do you suppose I ain't been caught yet?"

"Hm?" She turned so she could prop her face on her elbow and look at him.

"I've been on the run for years. Everyone knows I'm out here somewhere. But nobody can ever seem to find me unless I wanna be found. I can even find my way outta the country for concerts and missions, and be back home before anyone can tell the difference. How does that work?"

"Are you really going to tell me?" Even she could hear the surprise in her voice.

"Sure," he said casually. "'Cause it's the simplest thing in the world. I'm not hiding. People know where I am. But they _don't_ know at the same time."

She frowned. "That doesn't make any sense. What are you, some kind of Schrodinger's dee-jay?"

"'The people may be likened to water and the guerillas to the fish who inhabit it'."

That gave her pause. "Are you quoting a book at me?" she said skeptically.

He laughed. "Hey, I had to study a little bit!"

"Which book?"

He hesitated. "Don't remember," he said.

She didn't believe him, but she let it slide. "So the great secret to your anonymity…"

"No way, never that!"

"…your _disappearing act_ ," she corrected, "is nothing more complicated than your people not telling anyone where you are?"

He seemed to consider this—probably an act, she decided—before nodding. "Yeah, that's about it."

"But… that's so tenuous," she said. "It's so weak. One weak link brings it all down."

"Don't go over-engineering this," he said. "I know how you are."

It was an impossible request. She couldn't be anything else. Her mind wouldn't allow her to let the worry go, no matter what he said. "The people who are hiding you. They are… loyal to you, would you say?"

"Suuure," he said slowly.

"Loyal enough not to kill me for being part of Vishkar?"

He shifted uncomfortably. "If I tell 'em lay off, they'll lay off."

"But what will that do to you?" she said, unable to stop short of the final, terrible, logical end. "If these people, the ones that hide you and protect you… if they found out you're literally sleeping with the enemy… wouldn't that destroy your credibility and your cause?"

It was his turn to frown. "I didn't think you much cared 'bout my cause."

She looked away. That was a minefield. "It would mean they'd stop protecting you. And then… you're a fish out of water, to use your metaphor."

He scratched the back of his head. "I suppose it's sweet you're so worried about me," he said.

"I did say I want to keep doing this," she pointed out. "I just… don't know how."

"Are the stakes any lower for you?"

She choked on the question. How could she answer? She knew what she ought to say, what she believed—that technology and civil enlightenment had combined gloriously, that India was marching into the future, that her very career and success were proof positive of everything this new, ideal society was capable of achieving.

But he'd touched on something deeper—the hidden anxiety that clawed at her heart. She worried that millennia of sexism and caste culture had deeper roots than could easily be seen. She worried that not everyone was pleased by the new society, that some actively hated it. She worried—thought she could almost hear the whispers—that it was only her immense talent that made the great nameless _them_ tolerate her. She worried that she was papering over a rotten heart.

She worried about what might happen if _they_ knew about _this_.

She'd built a great, glittering edifice, but she was one of its pillars at the same time. What if that pillar were knocked out?

"No," was all she could say.

He began to shift; she rolled off of him so that he could rise. She knew him well enough to understand. He wasn't pacing, exactly. It wasn't nerves that moved him. It was the beat, the one only he could hear. She watched as it caught him in its grip. It animated him, compelled him to sway and shift in the dark of the bedroom. It was an… appealing sight.

It was something she recognized, in a vague and incomplete way. They were both compelled. Driven. Something inside them pushed them on. He just had more… physical ways of expressing it.

She sat up to watch him, fascinated. "What is it this time?" she asked.

"Bossa nova," he said. He didn't mean to sound flippant, she knew. He just expected her to know what that meant. It was a shame she had to constantly disappoint him.

"What's that?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Man-oh-man, we have _got_ to get you some culture. Even Reinhardt's got tunes, and he wouldn't know the good stuff if you injected it into his veins. And don't tell me they don't have music in India, I know that's a damn lie—it's just you."

She half-smiled. "Do you wish to recapitulate this argument? For the seventh time?"

He mimicked her facial expression. "Nah, not really." She was almost disappointed at that. It was safe ground—familiar and harmless.

"Then what?"

He forced himself to sit, but that didn't mean he stilled. He extended his index fingers and drummed them against his thighs. It was fast—the word was 'upbeat', wasn't it?—and wondrously rhythmic. Even when it seemed like it was straying, a few moments later the full design became clear. Maybe music did have its virtues.

Not that she'd ever admit that. Not without a fight, anyway.

"You could come with me," he blurted.

She blinked. The words had bounced off of her completely. "What?"

He turned his face away. "Man, I've been meaning to say that for a while, but I could never…" His hands stilled. "Come with me," he said. "I mean, like, stay with me. Give up your work for Vishkar. Disappear into the favelas."

"Just like that?" she said, still gripped in disbelief.

He looked sheepish. "Well, it's not like I can just come in from the cold. That whole 'internationally wanted rebel' thing. Kinda puts a damper on it." He waved at the window. "But you could join me. You could be part of life out here."

"In the land of one hundred percent humidity one hundred percent of the time?"

"I didn't say it was all groovy." His smile showed he hadn't taken the objection seriously, but it quickly faded. He extended a hand out towards her face. "It'd work, though. We'd be together."

She watched as his hand grew closer, went to pass—tenderly—along the side of her face. Before it got to her neck, she turned away. "You know it's not that simple."

"It could be," he protested.

She sighed. "A charming fiction… but a fiction all the same. Do you know what you're asking me to forsake? You might have some idea, but… do you know?"

"I'm all ears," he said, but his face had already fallen. He knew engaging on these terms was asking to lose.

Which had been the case from the beginning.

"I do believe in the Vishkar cause," she said. "I won't try to sell you on it," she added, heading him off just as he was sucking in air to rebut. "Any more than I would expect you to sell me on yours. It's only to let you know that to give it up, to join you, would be giving up much that I believe. And much that I am."

He nodded slowly. "We are the beat we dance to, and all that."

"There's more," she went on. For the first time, she raised her prosthetic. He didn't react to it, except in that careful way people look straight ahead when they're trying everything in their power not to stare. (She registered it automatically. It was normal.) She forced the issue by interposing it between their faces. "If I were to leave Vishkar's service, this would not work for long. It would lose power, and I could not recharge it. Even if I could," she said to preempt his half-formed objection, "in a few days its maintenance check would come due, and I could not perform it. Shortly after that it would need replacement parts, which I would not have. To leave Vishkar would mean, literally, leaving a part of myself behind."

He frowned. "So you're a slave to the corp. Bound to it with chains of light."

"To one frame of mind, yes."

"That's so awful."

The passion in his voice was intoxicating—and so, so wrong. "It is not awful," she admonished. "It is order."

"Order," he repeated. His disbelief had depth, breadth, and texture, a veritable landscape of contempt.

"Yes," she said. "It is the highest form of symbiosis. It is that rarified territory where mutual dependence isn't just advantageous, but necessary."

"Mutual? Ain't nothing mutual about it. You don't have the keys to their arms."

"After a fashion I do," she said, thinking of all she had built. Then again… it wasn't her name on the patents, was it?

Not that it mattered, she decided quickly. They were bound all the same. Without that order there was nothing but anarchy, horror, and despair. Vishkar believed that as fiercely as she did.

Lucio started the rhythm on his leg again. After a few moments, it slowed, and stopped. He got up and sat next to her on the bed. "Well, don't say I didn't try," he said.

"I will not." She leaned against him. Nestled against him. She recognized what it was. She was clinging to comfort. It felt right, natural, even though it was anything but. How many of her countrymen would have scraped and clawed to be in his position? He hadn't done anything. He hadn't even asked. It had all just… happened.

She still wasn't clear on why.

Was it really just that old, hackneyed saying about opposites attracting? They were antithetical in so many ways. Even if she admitted that possibility, she still had grounds to dismiss it, because they had their similarities, too. Both could sway others with force of personality as well as force of action. They shared a degree of passion, activity, and energy rare in others.

She had to reluctantly accede that these were sexually attractive characteristics.

She also had to accede that he would probably have said "they're hot".

That couldn't be it, though. That couldn't be the reason. Those qualities might be rare in the general pool of humanity. In the circles she moved in, though—in Overwatch circles—they were universal. Even Tracer, carefree sprite that she was, had similar amounts of passion, activity, energy, force of personality… That was her line in the old propaganda videos, wasn't it? "We are determination."

Satya didn't need to take Lucio to bed to find someone with those characteristics. When you piled on top of that his delusions, his lack of civilization, his, well, childishness… He had a lot running against him.

So what was it that had brought them together?

She didn't know. Her mind, mighty as it may be, was helpless to answer.

His arm snaked around her and held her close. The moment was fading. Passion and hormones were receding. She felt an overpowering need to bathe. The animal side of her, still present despite her thorough mastery of it, was clamoring to soak in his scent forevermore. Her rational mind was pointing out that she needed to be thoroughly scentless to survive the immediate future.

This part was the second-worst.

She sighed as her never-idle mind whirred along, throwing her down paths she'd rather avoid. Then again, she wouldn't be Symmetra if she took the path of least resistance. "You had to try, didn't you?" she asked.

"Hm?"

"You had to try… to get me to join you?"

"Well, yeah," he said. "Then we wouldn't have to do all this hiding-and-teleporting mess every time."

"We still couldn't be together if I did," she said. "We would still have to hide everything, lest it damage our respective causes."

She frowned, unable to prevent her mind from going further, 'a' leading to 'b' as inexorably as gravity. "But… it would deprive Vishkar of an important asset."

"…what are you saying?" His voice was worried, with a touch of anger in it. He resented her going here.

She regretted it, but she couldn't avoid it. "I must know," she said, voice small. "Did you start this affair in the hopes of hurting Vishkar?"

It was a brazen question, of the sort they'd worked hard to avoid. She expected him to have a temper—she would have, in her coldly furious fashion. (Even her logical mind knew that anger was a rational, and occasionally useful, response.) She could hear him in her mind—picture him—letting the anger build as he searched for the right response.

He put a hand on her chin. Violence, then—she could…

He was ever so gentle as he guided her gaze to match his. To her amazement, there was no anger to be found. His face had nothing like that. If it had any emotion at all, it was hurt.

"I get why you'd ask that," he said unconvincingly. "But look at me. Just look. Is that how I look? Is this the face of the guy who'd look at you, and who'd do all this, just to get at someone else?"

Their gazes locked. His eyes were captivating. She saw sincerity, and beneath it sincerity again, an endlessly recursive algorithm.

He released her chin. She had a sweeping urge to look away. She held against it, let the moment stretch, as he clearly expected. He reached down with a hand—then, after a moment, both hands. He took hers in his. He raised them. Both hands, flesh and cybernetic, he brought to his face. He placed her hands against his face.

"You may hate everything I stand for," he said. "And I hate everything about Vishkar. That don't mean I hate you. I hope you believe that. And I way, way hope that you don't hate me, neither."

She'd thought about it. By all the gods, she'd thought about it. It would have been so easy to wait for him to open the Path, and send through a squad of Vishkar's less savory, more direct enforcers. She wouldn't have to take part in it at all. It would be the neatest, quickest way to do it.

To end this.

To bring the world one step closer to harmony.

She'd decided, with less trouble than she'd expected, not to do that. No. If someone from Vishkar was going to kill him for trusting her like this, she'd bear that burden herself. She wouldn't pretend it wasn't hers. She would own it. She would kill him.

Except that then she'd decided not to kill him.

No. Betraying him, using this relationship to kill or capture him… that wasn't something she could do.

Look at what he'd done. He'd reflected her question back at him. Was she that hypocritical—to demand certainty of him while failing to provide it back? Shameful.

He chuckled irrepressibly. "Even now you're livin' in your head again."

She actually blushed. "I don't hate you," she said, hands dropping away. "I'm glad you don't hate me, either. I am sorry for asking."

"Don't be," he said as he gathered her in his arms and pulled her close again. "I'm glad you asked. You gotta get these things out in the open, y'know? I'd rather you ask and have us go through this than let it stick in your brain. I know how full that head of yours gets."

"Do you?" she said idly, but her heart wasn't in it. In this posture she couldn't see his face. There was no way of judging if he believed his own words.

The timer in her head was buzzing. Her time was nearly up. Before long she'd be missed—before long, the opening she'd left to return would close. She'd left it that way on purpose, to force herself to cut her visits off and retreat. She both blessed and cursed that decision.

She sighed. He knew—he was nodding before she spoke. "I gotcha. You gotta roll, doncha?"

"Yes," she said, snuggling into his chest.

He managed a semi-forced chuckle. "I guess it's for the best. It was gettin' kind of heavy up in here."

"It's always heavy in here," she said drily. "It's one hundred percent humidity one hundred percent of the time. Then we have sex in it. For the air to be any thicker, we would have to be underwater."

There was nothing forced about his laugh this time. "You're funnier than people give you credit for," he said, stroking her shoulder. "I'm lucky I get to see that part of you."

"Oh, is that the part you're lucky to see?" she said, even more drily.

"Well, it's the most attractive part, anyway."

She pushed away from him—abruptly, self-consciously. It was too easy to stay and flirt and banter and stay. Too easy. Harnessing the focus for which she was rightly famous, she started dressing. She knew he was looking at her. She was impervious to his gaze. She felt nothing. It was like he didn't exist.

She couldn't bear it otherwise.

She didn't take long. In moments she was ready to head back. She tapped at buttons on the base of the teleporter she'd given him. Input a code only she knew. Rigged it for one-way transit back to Vishkar territory.

One step and it was all over.

It was such a long, long step.

"Hey," he said, and the urgency in his voice gave her pause. She looked back at him. He was still gloriously nude, but something had changed. He was more naked than nude, now. He looked exposed, vulnerable, in a way he hadn't before.

"Yes?" she asked.

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Until next time, right?"

She really shouldn't. Better to end this now.

This moment was the worst.

She looked at her foe and her lover, her enemy and her confidant, her foil and her complement.

She really shouldn't.

"There is nothing I would like more," she said.

She took her step before she registered his reaction. She didn't want to see it.


End file.
